Malaysia Airlines Redefines Bad Year

Think you have had a bad year? Ever? Unless you are Malaysia Airlines, your worst year probably doesn’t qualify as a bad year. It is now so much that Malaysia Airlines has lost two airplanes, but the circumstances of those losses that seem so horrible.

First, there was Flight 370. In the early morning hours of March 8, 2014, it disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard. Despite a huge international search, no trace of the jet has ever been discovered.

Today, the ill-fated airline lost another aircraft. Flight 17 took off from Amsterdam on a flight to Kuala Lumpur. Its flight path took it over the border between Ukraine and Russia – an area of high tension. Someone on the ground fired a missile at Flight 17, striking it 30,000 feet above the ground and knocking it from the sky, killing all aboard. The debris from the plane fell in an area about six square miles large in Ukraine. Many of the dead found on the ground were still strapped into their seats.

It has been a very bad year for Malaysia Airlines, and we are only in July.